This is the fourth in a selection of chapters from the book King of the Squatters by jaybo which we are delighted to be able to share on Winter Oak. The whole text can be found as a pdf here. Here we are again in 2015.
Fascism was defined by the Italian dictator, Mussolini, as the merging of governments and corporations. When prime ministers like Tony Blair and politicians started also working in top positions at big companies, creeping fascism began.
In the height of a glorious summer, we started receiving fascist threats, directly against the entire camp, but also, astonishingly, a national extreme right-wing organization began threatening the entire city of Liverpool. Liverpool has always traditionally been left wing and anti-fascist. For example, Ken Loach had chosen a scouse girl to read her grandfather’s letters from Spain, written whilst he had been fighting fascists in the Spanish Civil War, in his film ‘Land and Freedom’ (pictured). Approximately two thousand brave souls from Liverpool went to Barcelona and beyond to fight with the anarchists and socialists against Franco and the fascists in 1936. Those men and women were called the ‘international brigades’, which George Orwell also joined and wrote about in his book Homage to Catalonia.
The threats directed at the camp initially came from a local idiot, not shy about his shallow beliefs or violent threats. He had several German shepherd dogs which he sometimes walked around the camp with, but he began threatening to drive his car over our tents whilst we slept. I doubt I was the only one who lost a lot of sleep at that time. Thankfully, none of his threats ever materialised.
The threats against the entire city were something altogether different. They were still made by idiots, but those idiots were more organised and committed, and they were a group, not an individual. I forget the name of the group, possibly the ‘English Defence League’ (EDL) who had some support at that time. The Liverpool Echo newspaper informed the people of Liverpool that a right-wing group had told them they were coming to the city to burn it down and only bullets would stop them! Many of us could not believe either the balls, or the stupidity, of those people.
At our camp, the atmosphere became electrified. Most of our guys were not activists, far from it. Politics was meaningless bullshit for them, irrelevant to their direct lives. They could sound sexist, racist, homophobic or ageist; they could sound right-wing themselves just regurgitating sound bites from the right-wing mainstream media. But for me, that situation catalysed their real, unadulterated feelings and beliefs. They were spoiling for a fight for sure, and they were right at the front of the queue waiting in Lime Street train station for the representatives of the master race to greet them.
In what must surely be one of the great moments in Liverpool’s history, fifty racist nut cases pulled up in a train to discover that about one thousand five hundred people had brought the city centre and train station to a grinding halt, waiting to say hello, antifa style. Quite fabulously, the police decided that the only solution to prevent carnage was to lock the fascists in the train station’s left-luggage room, for their own safety!
After a few hours of being locked in with the luggage, the fascist leader actually convinced the police to let him out and give a little speech. He was immediately subjected to flying bottles, and Jed managed to punch him. Media were everywhere, and this could have easily resulted in two of our guys going straight back to Walton prison. Thankfully, it did not.
All of the guys from the camp had been so eager to meet the fascists that no-one kept to our agreed plan, that we needed at least six people to stay on site at the LA/UOTH camp. I was concerned that our local fascist might see an opportunity to do us harm, combined with the fact that the national fascist group had found out about our camp and said that they would attack it, so I remained alone at the camp. Marianne checked in on me, as did another wonderful female supporter. I pleased to see all of our guys return home safely. I pretended I had not been scared. They were jubilant.
That day, together with the daily organising of our own lives, voluntarily and co-operatively, was enormously politicising and empowering for all the young homeless girls and guys. Some were just teenagers when their parents had thrown them out of their homes. Val was just sixteen when she came to the camp in solidarity with her slightly older brother, Jeff. They were from a ‘good’ family, but Jeff, loved by everyone, had been thrown onto the streets by his parents.
One Friday night, our self-declared leaders, Connor and Juliette, arrived, and immediately called a meeting. They had sheets of paper with some rules that they had decided they wished to impose upon us. No stolen goods, no spice, no sexist language… Most people were out, so they went around and stuck their papers onto every tent. When the guys came back to the camp, they immediately ripped the rules off every tent and burned them, to my amusement. We discussed the situation, and all decided in consensus that we did not want any rules and we certainly did not want anyone trying to impose their rules upon us. Tez, of all people, broke my heart when he suggested that we could all discuss the matter and write our own guidelines, not rules, if it was agreed to be necessary.
Seeing so many of these damaged young women and men on spice was crippling for me. I had watched a documentary as research that had been so disturbing that it was difficult to watch to the end. I hated spice and would have loved nobody to use it from the camp, but I knew that was asking for a miracle. At a mere one third of the cost of cannabis, that synthetic nightmare became the most common drug amongst the homeless and the most common drug in the prisons. It was criminal to call this ‘synthetic cannabis’, as it was harder to get off than heroin or crack cocaine.
The LAs and UOTH had built their own diy kitchen from recycled pallets and plastic on the camp before my arrival. But as autumn loomed, we began preparing for a long, cold winter. We planned and started building diy structures that would be capable of sustaining and sheltering us throughout the cold months, inspired by a protest camp (against the building of a new, huge, super max prison) in Wrexham, Wales, which we were in contact with and had visited.
The tale of how the LA/UOTH camp ended, which dealt a heavy blow to the LAs as a national ‘organisation’, is painful to tell.
After months of almost unanimous support across Liverpool, things went very sour, very quickly. The Liverpool Echo had done a hatchet job when it ran a story claiming that the LAs had stormed a benefit dinner for Jamie Bulger’s family. Jamie Bulger was a mere baby when he was abducted and killed in Walton, Liverpool, by two boys who were aged just nine and ten years old. The murder shook the city to its core and stayed in people’s memories for many years after the event. Nobody in their right mind would storm such an event. The newspaper could not have made a more slanderous accusation. Overnight, the LAs went from being the rebel darlings of the city to becoming absolute scum in the eyes of the gullible public.
Several people who were at the event described to me what had actually happened. Crucially, the event was not a benefit gig for the Bulger family. I was told Jamie’s parents were apparently at an event which was more of a night for Mayor Joe Anderson (pictured). That was why the LAs had given their energy to attempting to interrupt his party. For some reason, several taxi drivers took a dislike to a few of our crowd, which resulted in one woman being dragged around by her hair by a taxi driver. Ex-army Grandad managed to punch him, and a scuffle broke out, outside the venue. That was the long and short of it. But the damage was done. Mud sticks. We became the scourge of the city, and I became scared to call myself an activist of love.
A young man named Joe had been visiting the camp. He had become known to the LAs and UOTH as a supporter since the occupation of the Bank of England. Joe was quite striking in his looks, with bright blond hair, and he always wore a Palestinian scarf around his neck. He always brought cakes and variety of tasty food. He was known by everyone, as he was very vocal in his hatred for the police and he constantly ranted against Israel. He made music and had set up his own recording studio in his flat, which was not far from the camp. He had cerebral palsy and had been instantly accepted by the LAs. Joe seemed harmless.
When I met him, I thought he had one hell of an ego but, like the others, considered him to be harmless. He told me that he wanted to expose undercover cops on Merseyside. When I first went to his flat, I realised that, as he did not drink or take drugs, he had plenty of his government sick pay to buy any books that he wanted. Joe had some extremely interesting books, and he introduced me to several alternative media channels on-line. He spent a lot of time on-line and was interested in the ‘false flag’ news programmes. He said he was a Muslim. He did not seem to have any friends.
I began spending time with Joe at his apartment and was interested in his work trying to expose any undercover cops at the camp. Two obvious suspects were the two people trying to control everything. Please, do not get me wrong, for I have come across so many authoritarians and dominating control freaks over the years, even amongst self-described anarchists and anti-authoritarians, that it beggars belief. So, there was no evidence of any kind against those two people. I made a big point of telling Joe that he needed some substance to his claims before making such serious accusations against anybody.
The next night I went to his place, to find him jubilant. He told me that he had a list of twelve undercover cops! I replied, “What the fuck happened last night?” He did not answer. As if by magic, in twenty-four hours, he had gone from the flimsiest suspicions about two people to having a list of twelve people who, in his mind, were guaranteed undercover cops! I was utterly dumbfounded. He told me that he would publish his work with the undercover cops’ identities as soon as his website was complete. Again, I strongly recommended to him that he needed some real evidence to back up to his claims.
Next thing I knew, I was top of his list of people we all knew, published on-line as cops for all the civilised world to see! I blew, exploded inside – that little rat. What a fucking scum bag. I so wanted to kill him. No one would particularly know or care. I hated myself for thinking like that. Only when my daughter’s mother had been raped by a guy we knew, had I wanted to kill before.
Never had I been challenged in such a way before. It took all my energy not to seriously harm Joe. Thankfully, all the LAs and UOTH had been through so much together that they had become really tight. They all knew and trusted each other and also had long backgrounds, family and friends locally. Unlike the accuser. Many simply laughed off Joe’s accusation.
So, the camp was still receiving threats from fascists, both locally and nationally. The national fascists proved their intelligence by returning to Liverpool another two times, after being locked in the left-luggage department. Our guys greeted them every time. A few of our crew, including Lisa Love, got stuck back in prison. The public hated us. All we needed then was to be followed by drones!
Joe and I had previously made a freedom-of-information request to Merseyside police about drones: whether they had any and several related questions, which we wrote and he sent. We found information, in the Liverpool Echo, stating that the force had trained with them five years previously. They took a long time replying, then denied all knowledge of having or using drones.
All the pressure led to some folk leaving the camp, and numbers had become low when my tent was burgled. I was upset because it was some homeless guys, but I tried to empathise and did. Our self-declared leaders, Connor and Juliette, declared that the LA’s and UOTH’s camp was officially over. Those of us remaining were fuming. Then, one morning, a group of us were followed from the Sefton Meadows camp by a large drone, to Sefton Park, where we panicked and took cover in the bushes. When we jumped into the bushes to hide and escape, we all witnessed the drone go straight up really quickly, so high that we could no longer see it.
We all saw a very big drone, absolutely not a ten-pound toy from a Chinese factory. The drones the police trialled were one metre across, with audio and visual capabilities of up to three kilometres. Essentially military grade, highest-quality technology. We were all freaked out by the experience. It felt to me like the world had become a much darker place for squatting and feeding the homeless.
Then it happened again. This time, Joe and I had been walking along a main road in Toxteth. We were followed and both clearly witnessed a large drone. Liverpool’s summer of love had turned into a cold winter of discontent. I believed the LAs and UOTH’s actions had been the most significant events in the city since the riots that had exploded both in 1981 and 2011.
The local authority cleared our last few tents from the camp when everyone was out one day. All of our homes, our red and black tents that had been donated to us by a sympathetic local group, disappeared. I moved into my friend’s polytunnel on nearby allotments, where we had shared two plots a few years before. Living in a polytunnel in winter would have been OK if I could have kept the doors shut. But I ate organic yellow tomatoes from my bed and organic grapes and peaches from the tunnel. Nobody bothered me, but it was a bit tricky at times, with some of the nosy, old allotment holders wanting to know everybody’s business.
When I described the organic fruit and vegetables that I was eating in the polytunnel to one friend, he replied, “You’re livin’ the dream!” to which we guffawed. Life was hard, and I was needing to spend twelve hours per day in bed, just to be able to function. Recycling tobacco from the floor and ashtrays in the winter in Liverpool takes dedication and commitment. I often experienced homeless people and Big Issue sellers looking at me in absolute bewilderment. You can imagine how the tax-paying public responded. But I did not care.
One night, I walked right into Joe on a very narrow pathway. I could not stop myself putting my face right up against his. I had not planned for such an occurrence. I said calmly, “I should fuckin’ bury you alive right now!” He looked petrified. He could not limp away from the situation. Luckily for him, the area is a lazy dog-walkers’ spot, and one appeared metres away from us as I threatened him. I saw Joe look at them and knew at that moment I could do nothing without it being witnessed. Joe survived, and I stayed out of prison for murder.
I am not a violent person. I hate violence. I knew that I could never hurt someone who was weaker than me. Imagine if I had beaten someone up who had cerebral palsy. That would stick for life. A few of my friends felt that I was an idiot not to beat him. But I have never in my life instigated violence. On the contrary, I have been attacked several times, often from behind, and have only ever fought in self-defence, as a child and adult.
This was around the time that a young boy, a child of approximately ten years old, ‘offered me out’! A kid in Toxteth seriously wanted to fight with me. I felt so sick. He thought he could honestly beat me, at little more than half my size and weight. That kind of delusion made me think of Jamie Bulger’s boy murderers. They were fairly ordinary working-class kids, with heads full of violent computer games and TV murders. I also watched a young boy on a TV documentary describing how he could jump up high into the air, spin around and then kick a person’s head off. Then I read a very interesting book about the Jamie Bulger murder, which analysed the supposedly evil boys’ behaviour, and came to conclusions that were extremely challenging for mainstream society.
After so much full-on stress, I was glad to work at a stall with Shane for free entry into a weekend punk rock festival. Friends were there, and a woman from Next to Nowhere asked if I wanted to stay in the social centre, as the weather was so cold and wet. I replied no, stating that I had been involved at the centre’s beginning when it had been agreed by consensus that nobody should be allowed to sleep there. And I was well aware that the landlords had not wanted anyone sleeping in their city-centre basement space.
After only a few more freezing nights in the polytunnel, I was almost begging for a key to the social centre. The social centre collective and co-op landlords agreed that I could sleep there for a short while, as long as I made no fuss. They had all known me for many years and knew that I would try to be on my best behaviour. I really appreciated their kind gesture.
It was lovely to have a better shelter, more sleep and less time in bed. I believe our landladies knew that I had to let Grandad sleep in the space on a few bleak nights. He always insisted on leaving by seven am, even though the shop did not open until nine. He respected the risk I was taking, for, although I got on well with the co-op, I think one of them would have thrown me out, had she known Grandad was staying. Grandad was sixty-four years of age. He had raised his three daughters alone and spent fourteen years fighting for queen and country in the army, before becoming homeless.
Prior to Joe’s accusation, Grandad and I had made a video with him. I had rewritten the lyrics to ‘Walking in a Winter Wonderland’, the old classic, and changed it to ‘Walking in a Homeless Wanderland’. We had gone to the city centre and bought cheap costumes for the video, which Joe filmed and edited. Grandad and I had so much fun making that video.
Joe had sent ‘Walking in a Homeless Wanderland’ to ‘The Devil’, Liverpool’s second most notorious gangster after Curtis Warren. The Devil was on a public relations mission, trying to improve his image for the legal system and the British public. Fearing another long jail sentence, The Devil announced that he would give one of his empty buildings over to the homeless to stay in over the Christmas period. He wanted to arrange a great Christmas dinner for us all, and he would even spend his Christmas Day having dinner with the homeless.
Joe believed that Merseyside police, via Curtis Warren and his underworld connections, were the biggest drug dealers in Europe. Curtis had claimed that he would not get out of bed for less than one million pounds. When Joe started communications with The Devil (pictured), and I witnessed him for the first time, ranting on-line, I decided I wanted nothing to do with him.
But after watching a documentary about The Devil, I discovered that he was actually an interesting man who had won major martial arts championships. He and his pals began their unofficial careers fighting against racism and drug dealing, but not through the accepted channels. The Devil and his three martial arts champion friends used to go to The Grafton, a night club that was racist. They would take over the place, when black people were not welcome, climbing over the bar and helping themselves to free champagne and behaving completely contrary to the club’s racist policies. I am not sure if black people were even allowed into the club around the time of the 1981 riots.
Joe had arranged a meeting with The Devil to discuss getting his building for the homeless over Christmas. None of the other guys would have done this. Before I knew it, we had a key and were looking inside an old pub that been refurbished for residential use but was unfinished. The central heating and hot water systems were not working. But hey, we were homeless. We could not believe our luck and, for some of the homeless men and women, The Devil was a legend. They could not believe that they would be having Christmas dinner with him.
It was actually on Christmas Day, when I went for dinner, that a man I had known for years, called Andy, refused to let me in, saying he needed to get Joe. When Joe came to the door, he began shouting that I could not go in because I was a cop and they shut the door in my face. I could have just cried myself to death.
Previously:
Jaybo is currently living in a cave in southern Spain. If you would like to contact him, please write to winteroak@greenmail.net and we will forward your email to him.
